1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a vehicle and a method for identifying vehicles in the surroundings of the vehicle.
2. Description of the Related Art
Devices and methods for performing vehicle dynamics control in a motor vehicle are known. For example, the paper International Congress and Exposition, Feb. 27-Mar. 2, 1995, Detroit, Mich., SAE Paper 950759, 1995 describes a device and a method for performing vehicle dynamics control in a motor vehicle. The vehicle dynamics controller is a system for keeping the motor vehicle stable and in its lane. This is achieved through selective braking of individual wheels of the motor vehicle. For this purpose, the driver's request, that is to say the set point behavior of the motor vehicle, and the behavior of the vehicle, that is to say the actual behavior of the motor vehicle, are determined by means of sensors. In a processing unit/control unit the difference between the set point behavior and the actual behavior is acquired as a control error and the individual actuators, for example the wheel brakes, are controlled with the objective of minimizing the control error. In particular yaw rate sensors, lateral acceleration sensors, steering wheel angle sensors, admission pressure sensors and wheel speed sensors, are used as sensors. There are no indications here of using at least one image sensor system composed of at least two image sensors which pick up essentially the same scene.
In order to assist the driver of a motor vehicle and to actuate the safety means, use is made of surroundings sensors with which, in particular, the distance from objects such as, for example, other vehicles or obstacles can be determined. The sensors in this context are generally embodied as radar, infrared or ultrasonic sensors. Furthermore, it is known that a combination of distance sensors and camera sensors produce a relatively high level of efficiency in the positioning of objects and their classification, and therefore permit additional functions such as detection of pedestrians.
“Handbook of Computer Vision and Applications Volume 1-3” discloses using 3D sensors, such as stereo cameras, to acquire image and position information on objects, therefore permitting wide-ranging safety functions. Furthermore, from the cited volumes it is apparent that a point of interest (POI) can be identified as a relevant region in a scene of the image area from a mono camera image by means of algorithms such as sequence analysis, or analysis of the visual flow can be used indirectly to acquire distances from other road users.
In the text which follows, a device for vehicle-to-vehicle communication and/or for communication between two vehicles over a central infrastructure is referred to as a telematics unit.
DE 102004022289 discloses a method for performing vehicle dynamics control in a motor vehicle. In this context, a sensor senses a measured value and an actuator for performing vehicle dynamics control is actuated as a function of one of the measured values. For the purpose of vehicle dynamics control, image information from the surroundings of the motor vehicle is generated by means of an image sensor system, wherein two image sensors are provided which pick up the same scene. As a result, in order to assist the driver of a motor vehicle, a camera system is used in order to carry out comfort functions or cross-control functions of the motor vehicle which do not require a safe distance signal for objects.
DE 69033962 T2 discloses a method and a device for determining positions having satellite navigation devices. The latter have sufficient precision to be able to use vehicle-to-vehicle communication or communication between two vehicles via a central infrastructure to calculate the relative positioning and relative movement of vehicles with the level of precision which allows driver assistance systems to be operated.
In the text below, a device for vehicle-to-vehicle communication and/or for communication between two vehicles via a central infrastructure is referred to as a telematics unit.
However, the main problem here is that the information on the basis of which the respective application implements its technical control measures on the vehicle is not sufficiently reliable since it is not possible to ensure that further vehicles or objects are not located between the vehicle which is sensed by the telematics unit and the driver's own vehicle. Furthermore, the precision of satellite navigation is not sufficient to assign vehicles, whose approximate position is known from vehicle-to-vehicle communication, in a camera image in order to merge the data items with one another.
The information from a mono camera without a distance sensor is in many cases insufficient for comfort functions or safety functions since the distance from other vehicles cannot be determined reliably enough.